EDITORIAL: Humanitarian efforts by popes led to sainthood

History was made April 27 when two former popes were declared saints by the Roman Catholic Church in the presence of two living pontiffs, Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

The historic value of the event was not so much in that two men were canonized as it was in that many people alive today knew them, if not personally, via the electronic media.

Pope John Paul II, the former Karol Wojtyla, was head of the Roman Catholic Church from October 1978 until his death at the age of 84 in April 2005. He was canonized along with Pope John XXIII, the former Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who served from October 1958 until his death at the age of 81 in June 1963.

The Rev. Michael Rzonca, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Clifton Heights, summed up well the feelings of the general populace last week.

“I think people are feeling the joy of having someone they’ve known by television and radio. To be able to experience their teachings and love, to be able to say, ‘Here is someone I knew and loved’ - what an honor to have this happen in our lifetime,” said Rzonca.

The 66-year-old priest heads Delaware County’s parish for Roman Catholics of Polish descent, and the fact that Pope John Paul II, was the first Polish pontiff in the church’s 2,000-year history, was a point of pride for his parishioners who also worship at St. Hedwig’s Chapel in Chester.

However, he noted, the accomplishments of both former popes are what earned them their sainthood.

Rzonca believes Pope John XXIII will be most remembered for making the Roman Catholic liturgy more accessible to the people through convening the Second Vatican Council in October 1962. It produced such changes as turning the altar around so the priest faces the people and allowing the Mass to be said in English instead of Latin.

“He was opening wide the windows of the church to the world,” said Rzonca who was ordained in 1973.

He got to see Pope John Paul II at a distance, when the pontiff passed in his limousine on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway during his visit to Philadelphia in 1979 and again at St. Peter’s Square in Rome in the early 1980s. Pope John Paul II’s visits to more than 100 countries have immortalized him as “The Pilgrim Pope.”

“He was saying, ‘I’m here for everyone, not just in Rome. I’m here for you and with you, not over you. I’m a fellow pilgrim,’” said Rzonca.

But the impact of both contemporary popes has gone beyond just the Roman Catholic Church. Just weeks before his death in 1963, Pope John XXIII made a plea for world peace with human rights as the foundation.

During the 1940s, when he was still Bishop Roncalli and a Vatican envoy, he helped prevent the deportation of Jews from Greece during the German occupation and interceded on behalf of Bulgarian Jews and Jewish refugees in Turkey. He is credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews’ lives through procuring exit visas and forged birth certificates. He also aided Jews in Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, France and Yugoslavia during World War II when Pope Pius XII failed to publicly condemn the Holocaust.

Pope John Paul II, who witnessed Nazi atrocities against Jewish friends in his native Poland, ultimately provided an apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s persecution of the Jews, from the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome in 2000.

He also asked forgiveness for sins committed by the church against women, Gypsies, Muslims and so-called heretics. He apologized for anti-Semitism, the crusades, the massacre of French Protestants, the torturous Reformation -- even for Galileo’s trial.

“We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood,” said the pontiff.

The Roman Catholic Church still has much housekeeping to do, especially in terms of clerical sexual abuse. However, the efforts of Pope John XXXII and Pope John Paul II to obliterate crimes against humanity and attain world peace indeed qualify them as saintly models for people of all faiths.